Sensitive files detailing the extra marital affairs, drug taking and use of prostitutes by very senior officers in the RAF have been stolen, raising fears within the Ministry of Defence that personnel could be vulnerable to blackmail.

Up to 500 people in the service could be affected by the theft. They have been interviewed individually about the possible consequences to them and to their families.

The potentially damaging information was stored on three computer hard drives that went missing from RAF Innsworth, Gloucestershire, last September. The files were not encrypted, so could be opened easily. The RAF disclosed the loss of the hard drives two weeks after they went missing, revealing only that the bank details and home addresses of 50,000 servicemen and women were on the computers.

It kept secret the fact that the "vetting" information about 500 staff had also disappeared. The defence secretary at the time, Des Browne, was not told, nor was Sir Richard Thomas, the then information commissioner. The details were also withheld from parliament.

What exactly was the point of this coverup by Ministry of Defence bureaucrats ?

Will any of them be punished ?

What use have the Burton and Hannigan reviews of data handling security been in this case ? Less than zero.

In a further statement to the Guardian, the ministry added: "All individuals identified as being at risk received personal one-on-one interviews to alert them to the loss of data, to discuss potential threats and to provide them with advice on mitigating action.

"There is no evidence to suggest that the information held on the hard drive believed to have been stolen from the secure ... site at MoD Innsworth has been targeted by criminal or hostile elements."

So have these "one to one interviews" determined which of these people had the strongest motive for helping with, or instigating, "an inside job" to suppress their own "vetting secrets" ?

How the Ministry of Defence can really be so sure that this data is not in the wrong hands, is a mystery.

Does their definition of "hostile elements" also include supposedly friendly allied foreign intelligence agencies and UK Private Military Contractor / Mercenary companies who employ former UK military personnel ?

Are the current copies of these file now strongly encrypted or not ?

UPDATE:
Details of the FOIA requests and the coverup are available from the Jess the Dog blog of the retired RAF officer mentioned at the end of the BBC tv documentary:

A member of the public found them inside an orange cardboard envelope on a train from Waterloo station to Surrey and passed them on to the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner.

Would this scandal have been covered up if the member of the public had simply not returned the documents, or had not used the BBC to do so ?

One of the documents was a seven-page report by the joint intelligence committee entitled Al-Qaida Vulnerabilities.

Classified as top-secret, the intelligence assessment on al-Qaida was so sensitive that every document was numbered and marked "for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only". It is understood the assessment also contained reports on the state of the Islamist terror network in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.

The document reportedly contained names of individuals or locations that might have been useful to Britain's enemies.

The second document, commissioned from the committee by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), contained an analysis of Iraq's security forces. It included a top-secret and in some places "damning" assessment of Iraq's security forces.

Jackson was on secondment to the Cabinet Office from the MoD at the time the documents were lost.

The court heard that the intelligence files "had the potential to damage national security and UK international relations".

This is an extraordinarily lenient "punishment" for potentially tipping off terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies to the UK intelligence communities highest level strategic intelligence assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of our enemies.

What assurance is there that the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Joint Intelligence Committee, and their Assessments Staff, have made it physically and culturally impossible for such highly classified documents to actually be printed out and taken physically out of a secure reading room in Whitehall ?

Why are there no airport style, pat down searches, "see through your clothes" body scanners and physical searches of bags and briefcases, on every one of the small number of people who are handling such top secret documents, without exception, to physically prevent them from ever taking such unencrypted documents home, either deliberately or by accident ?

Unless and until, the Labour Government and the Whitehall bureaucracy, at the senior level at which Richard Jackson worked at, can demonstrate a real change in attitude and culture to our data security and privacy concerns, they simply cannot be trusted with national scale databases of our personal data.

This case contrasts sharply with the Official Secrets Act trial of Corporal Daniel James, a foreign born interpreter who worked for General David Richards in Afghanistan, who has now been promoted to be head of the British Army.

Despite the much more severe risk to UK anti-terrorism and national security, which Richard Jackson's negligence or arrogance put at risk, he has not been vilified in the mainstream media or by the prosecution, in court, like the Iranian born Corporal Daniel James has.

It is worth reading the blog articles by Michael James Smith, who has an insider's perspective of machinations in such Official Secrets Act cases, having served time in prison after having been convicted of passing technical defence contractor documents to the KGB in 1993, which he is trying to have overturned. He has actually visited and interviewed Daniel James in Wandsworth prison (what are the chances that this prison visit was electronically snooped on ? )

The prosecution case against Corporal Daniel James appears to rest on 7 unencrypted emails between Daniel James and the Iranian military attache in Kabul, Afghanistan, which must have been intercepted whilst he was back in the United Kingdom, awaiting a return to duty.

It also has implications for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's totalitarian Communications Data Bill and her attempts to piggyback a secret centralised communications data traffic database onto the GCHQ Intercept Modernisation Programme.

Meanwhile, there does not appear to be any prosecution over the incident which emerged a few days after the Richard Jackson stupidity, also involving HM Treasury and sensitive terrorist financing and money laundering documents, also left on a train:

A Ministerial Written Statement confirms the story in The Sun, and our speculation that it was the TAFMIS (Training Administration and Financial Management Information System) database which has been lost, yet again:

A COMPUTER hard-drive with 1.6million pieces of personal data about the armed forces is missing, The Sun can reveal.

Up to one million people could be affected by the scandal.

The names and private details of around 100,000 serving personnel -- half the armed forces -- are believed to be on the drive.

There are also next-of-kin details, 600,000 potential services applicants and the names of their referees.

The data can be used to steal the IDs of servicemen and women on the frontline. It is the worst information security breach to hit the MoD. And it is the second largest ever for the Government since the Datagate scandal last year when the Inland Revenue lost the details of 25million people.

New Defence Secretary John Hutton was last night "spitting with anger" about the loss, which affects all ranks across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF.

The drive includes passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth, driving licence details, names and contact numbers for family doctors and dentists, and religion groups. Officials admitted there is probably a "small amount" of troops' bank account details.

The hard-drive belonged to the MoD's main IT contractor EDS and was used by the firm -- based in Hook, Hants -- to test MoD computer equipment.

What possible testing requires a full copy of the live personnel database rather than synthetic test data ?

The drive was discovered missing on Wednesday -- but it could have disappeared weeks ago.

A source close to Mr Hutton said: "John believes it is a breach of trust which forces' personnel put in the ministry. EDS's contract will be examined and, if necessary, heads will roll."

An MoD spokesman last night confirmed the loss.

t.newtondunn@the-sun.co.uk

The fact the EDS are involved again, and the amount of data involved, we suspect that this is another copy of the previous, unencrypted TAFMIS-R(H)SQL database on a laptop computer hard drive, which was stolen from a parked vehicle in Birmingham back in January 2008.

We wonder if any of this data has been handed over or sold to the various Private Military Contractor companies who recruit former UK military service personnel.

How many hundreds of lost or stolen laptop computers or USB memory sticks etc. will it take before anyone is prosecuted at the Ministry of Defence ?

The Government's initial figures about the scale of the data security incompetence at the Ministry of Defence, following the theft of the MoD laptop computer with the personal details of over a million people (potential and actual military recruits and their families etc.) have been revised upwards, yet again, according to this Parliamentary Written Answer

Mark Pritchard: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence pursuant to the statement of 21 January 2008, Official Report, column 1225, on MOD (data loss), how many of the 347 laptops stolen or lost from the Ministry of Defence since 2004 have been recovered. [182359]

Des Browne: As a result of the theft of the Royal Navy laptop, the Ministry of Defence has initiated an investigation into the details of all computers lost or stolen since 2003. This investigation is under way and I will write to the hon. Member when the information is available and arrange for a copy of my letter to be placed in the Library of the House.

Substantive answer from Des Browne to Mark Pritchard:

I undertook to write to you in answer to your Parliamentary Question on 29 January 2008, (Official Report, column 184W) about the number of laptops stolen or lost from the Ministry of Defence since 2004 that had subsequently been recovered.

The figure of 347 laptops that you quote can be derived from information provided in answer to the hon Member for Rayleigh (Mr Francois) on 19 January 2007, (Official Report, column 1363-4W) and the hon Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke) on 10 December 2007, (Official Report, column 58W) and relates only to stolen laptops.

Revised figures have been taken from the data collated in the course of the investigation into details of computers and other electronic media lost/stolen since 2003 and provided to Sir Edmund Burton as part of his review. For all years they show an increase in the number of stolen laptops from the numbers previously reported is because the Burton Review investigation revealed anomalies in the reporting process. Instructions have been issued to remedy these shortcomings.

Revised figures as at today are set out below.

17 July 2008 : Column 664W

Previously reported stolen laptops

Updated stolen laptops

Updated lost laptops

Updated total stolen and lost laptops

Updated laptops recovered (stolen/lost)

2004

173

272

22

294

6

2005

40

130

18

148

11

2006

66

155

27

182

6

2007

68

101

22

(1)123

9

Total

347

658

89

747

32

(1) A corresponding figure of 230 was given in Burton Report (Summary, Paragraph 38c, Page 9.) Subsequent reclassification and clarification of incidents has reduced the figure to 123.

7.The stolen laptop, designated TAFMIS-R(H)SQL, was one of a small population of, currently, 512 laptops, which hold a large database incorporating over 600,000 personal records. Investigations revealed that a total of 4 of these laptops have been stolen since 2004 (all from parked cars). Only the recent theft appears to have led to disciplinary proceedings. Although the security instructions for the safekeeping of laptops were clear in prohibiting them from being left in unattended vehicles, they did not dictate that the data must be encrypted.

[...]

18.The loss of four laptops containing 600,000 personal records from unattended vehicles in clear breach of security instructions (and common sense) out of total population of 55 laptops over a period of less than four years indicates a failure of supervision.

[...]

27. The laptop stolen from Edgbaston in January 2008 was a TAFMIS-R(H) laptop using SQL, which contained the whole RN/RAF database, holding some 600,000 personal data records. Although the laptop held records relating to some 600,000 recruits or potential recruits, investigations by MOD DG Info staff, in conjunction with EDS, has indicated that the database includes personal details of some 400,000 additional individuals, who were either referees or parents of the recruits. Technically, therefore, the laptop held some 1,000,000 personal records. The reason for the large number of records is due to the original user requirement and design drawn up between RN, RAF and AFPAA. The TAFMIS-R(H) design synchronises the whole database from the main server to the laptop.

[...]

34.During a visit to an Armed Forces Career Office (AFCO) Joint Services recruiting unit in London, it was discovered that recruiting staff were unaware of MOD DPA retention policy for recruiting data. Nevertheless, the TAFMIS system does not allow recruiters to delete information once submitted to the database. The only people able to delete are EDS staff under authorisation from ARTD. Yet it is understood that no policy or process currently exists to manage data according to the eight principles defined with in the DPA 1998.

[...]

30. Hard Power: There is anecdotal evidence that the censure and punishment handed out to those who lose, compromise or misuse personal data within the Department is inconsistent at present. Serious compromises of personal data must invoke appropriate punishment, in order to create a deterrent effect and to emphasise the seriousness of such losses.

Recommendation 38: MOD to review and formalise a coherent system of censure and punishment for those who lose or compromise personal data, where the level of punishment reflects the scale and seriousness of the loss; seeking to apply this equitably, regardless of whether the individual responsible is military or civilian, government employee or contractor.

The report heavily criticises EDS for failing to comply with instructions issued back in 2003, to ensure that all these laptop computers had Reflex Data's DataVault hard disk encryption software installed, suitable for Restricted documents and data at least. The current laptop hard disk encryption, which seems to have been installed rapidly in a few weeks, on all MoD laptops, after the Birmingham laptop theft, appears to be the CESG approved BeCrypt software. This contrasts with the failure to install such encryption over the previous five years.

There is no good reason why the entire recruitment database should have been designed to be synchronised with a local SQL copies on dozens of laptop computers. The claim that this would have been too expensive in terms of communications costs in 2002, is false, and telecomms prices have gone down since then.

This data aggregation of having all those personal records in one SQL database should have bumped up the Protective Marking classification well above Restricted.

If Recommendation 38 is actually implemented, perhaps we will actually see some proper sanctions i.e. prison sentences for the negligent , inept or corrupt.

Regrettably there is no sign of Minister of Defence Des Browne acting honourably and offering his resignation.

The Labour Government are up to their usual "bury bad news" media manipulation tricks again today.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has published the final Poynter Review into the lost copies of the entire national HMRC Child Benefit database scandal last October. - Poynter Review final report, 25 June 2008 (PDF file 1.13MB)

Unsurprisingly, the IPCC finds nobody at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, or at the National Audit Office, to be criminally responsible for breaching Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Perhaps the fact that HMRC got the Director of Public Prosecutions to sign prosecution immunity certificates to the is effect explains this, although this was probably necessary in order to secure the cooperation of the junior and middle ranking staff involved.

Apparently Robert Hannigans's Cabinet Office review of wider Whitehall data handling is also meant to be published today. Whether this takes into account the recent Top Secret Joint Intelligence Committee papers left on a train, or Hazel Blears' Restricted and Confidential Cabinet documents unencrypted on a stolen computer in her constituency office scandals, remains to be seen.

There is also meant to be a Ministerial Statement by Des "Swiss Tony" Browne, the embarrassing Defence Secretary, into the stolen, unencrypted laptop computer with personal details of 650,000 potential and actual military recruits.

Also published today is Sir Michael Pitt's final report into the lack of preparedness for last summer's floods in large areas of the countryside., which obviously must also be of interest to the mainstream media and broadcasters.

It may take some time for the media and for bloggers to comment properly on all of these reports (if they are fully available on line), which is, presumably, a deliberate media spin policy

There is no hint of any of the senior civil servants or of the supposedly politically accountable Ministers actually taking personal, responsibility for the scandals, and resigning with honour.

We are alternating between laughter and fury, at the catalogue of errors displayed by HMRC, which seems to stem from the incompetence of its former boss, the then Chancellor and current Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

We note that neither the Poynter Review, nor the IPCC has properly examined the National Audit Office's lax data handling procedures, especially in regard to their transfers of the unencrypted Child Benefit Data to and from their commercial audit sub-contractors KPMG.

When Secretary of State for Defence Des Browne admitted to the theft of an MoD recruitment laptop computer, containing over 600,000 personal records, he and his briefers, attempted to downplay just how disastrous a security breach this represents, by claiming in his Ministerial Statement on 21st January that

In some cases the record may be no more than a name, but I am advised that for about 153,000 people who progressed as far as submitting an application form to join the forces, more extensive personal data are held, including passport details, national insurance numbers, driver's licence details, family details, doctors' addresses and national health service numbers; for about 3,700 people, banking details were also included.

Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many of those individuals who had their personal details lost as a result of the theft in Edgbaston on 9 January of an MOD computer from the vehicle of a Royal Navy Officer are domiciled in (a) Scotland, (b) Wales, (c) Northern Ireland, (d) England and (e) elsewhere. [182396]

Des Browne: Where a record of domicile is held, the following figures
were recorded on the database at the time of the entry of the record.

Number

Scotland

59,553

Wales

37,546

Northern Ireland

14,223

England

459,778

Elsewhere

34,667

So, in fact, the vast majority of the stolen records consist of at least a name and address, and are not merely "no more than a name"

This unencrypted data security breach could easily pit the lives of serving or former members of the armed forces, and their families, at risk from terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies. Even people who never actually joined the armed services, but just expressed an interest in doing so, could be at risk, especially if they have, say, easily identifiable Muslim names, or an address in an area that is familiar to fanatics.

About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.

The hope is that you the readers, will help to insist that strong safeguards for the privacy of the individual are implemented, especially in these times of increased alert over possible terrorist or criminal activity. If the systems which should help to protect us can be easily abused to supress our freedoms, then the terrorists will have won.

We know that there are decent, honest, trustworthy individual politicians, civil servants, law enforcement, intelligence agency personnel and broadcast, print and internet journalists etc., who often feel powerless or trapped in the system. They need the assistance of external, detailed, informed, public scrutiny to help them to resist deliberate or unthinking policies, which erode our freedoms and liberties.

Email & PGP Contact

Please feel free to email your views about this blog, or news about the issues it tries to comment on.

Our PGP public encryption key is available for those correspondents who wish to send us news or information in confidence, and also for those of you who value your privacy, even if you have got nothing to hide.

We wiil use this verifiable public key (the ID is available on several keyservers, twitter etc.) to establish initial contact with whistleblowers and other confidential sources, but will then try to establish other secure, anonymous communications channels, as appropriate.

Current PGP Key ID: 0xE08E882B13FC89C which will expire on 30th September 2015.

You can download a free copy of the PGP encryption software from www.pgpi.org
(available for most of the common computer operating systems, and also in various Open Source versions like GPG)

We look forward to the day when UK Government Legislation, Press Releases and Emails etc. are Digitally Signed so that we can be assured that they are not fakes. Trusting that the digitally signed content makes any sense, is another matter entirely.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

Statewatch - monitoring the state and civil liberties in the European Union

The Policy Laundering Project - attempts by Governments to pretend their repressive surveillance systems, have to be introduced to comply with international agreements, which they themselves have pushed for in the first place

House of Lords - The Law Lords are currently the supreme court in the UK - will be moved to the new Supreme Court in October 2009.

Information Tribunal - deals with appeals under FOIA, DPA both for and against the Information Commissioner

Investigatory Powers Tribunal - deals with complaints about interception and snooping under RIPA - has almost never ruled in favour of a complainant.

Parliamentary Opposition

The incompetent yet authoritarian Labour party have not apologised for their time in Government. They are still not providing any proper Opposition to the current Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government, on any freedom or civil liberties or privacy or surveillance issues.

UK Government

Home Office - "Not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes" - Home Secretary John Reid. 23rd May 2006. Not quite the fount of all evil legislation in the UK, but close.

NIR and ID cards

Stand - email and fax campaign on ID Cards etc. [Now defunct]. The people who supported stand.org.uk have gone on to set up other online tools like WriteToThem.com. The Government's contemptuous dismissal of over 5,000 individual responses via the stand.org website to the Home Office public consultation on Entitlement Cards is one of the factors which later led directly to the formation of the the NO2ID Campaign who have been marshalling cross party opposition to Labour's dreadful National Identity Register compulsory centralised national biometric database and ID Card plans, at the expense of simpler, cheaper, less repressive, more effective, nore secure and more privacy friendly alternative identity schemes.

CommentOnThis.com - comments and links to each paragraph of the Home Office's "Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme".

De-Materialised ID - "The voluntary alternative to material ID cards, A Proposal by David Moss of Business Consultancy Services Ltd (BCSL)" - well researched analysis of the current Home Office scheme, and a potentially viable alternative.

Surveillance Infrastructures

CameraWatch - independent UK CCTV industry lobby group - like us, they also want more regulation of CCTV surveillance systems.

Every Step You Take a documentary about CCTV surveillance in the Uk by Austrian film maker Nino Leitner.

Transport for London an attempt at a technological panopticon - London Congestion Charge, London Low-Emission Zone, Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, tens of thousands of CCTV cameras on buses, thousands of CCTV cameras on London Underground, realtime road traffic CCTV, Iyster smart cards - all handed over to the Metropolitan Police for "national security" purposes, in real time, in bulk, without any public accountibility, for secret data mining, exempt from even the usual weak protections of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Eeclaim Your DNA from Britain's National DNA Database - model letters and advice on how to have your DNA samples and profiles removed from the National DNA Database,in spite of all of the nureacratic obstacles which try to prevent this, even if you are innocent.

Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair - the rich Uzbek businessman and his shyster lawyers Schillings really made a huge counterproductive error in trying to censor the blogs of Tim Ireland, of all people.

World's First Fascist Democracy - blog with link to a Google map - "This map is an attempt to take a UK wide, geographical view, of both the public and the personal effect of State sponsored fear and distrust as seen through the twisted technological lens of petty officials and would be bureaucrats nationwide."

Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.

Georgetown Security Law Brief - group blog by the Georgetown Law Center on National Security and the Law , at Georgtown University, Washington D.C, USA.

Big Brother Watch - well connected with the mainstream media, this is a campaign blog by the TaxPayersAlliance, which thankfully does not seem to have spawned Yet Another Campaign Organisation as many Civil Liberties groups had feared.

Spy on Moseley - "Sparkbrook, Springfield, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. An MI5 Intelligence-gathering operation to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham is taking liberties in every sense" - about 150 ANPR CCTV cameras funded by Home Office via the secretive Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM) section of ACPO.

FitWatch blog - keeps an eye on the activities of some of the controversial Police Forward Intelligence Teams, who supposedly only target "known troublemakers" for photo and video surveillance, at otherwise legal, peaceful protests and demonstrations.

Other Links

Free Gary McKinnon - UK citizen facing extradition to the USA for "hacking" over 90 US Military computer systems.

Parliament Protest - information and discussion on peaceful resistance to the arbitrary curtailment of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, in the excessive Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 Designated Area around Parliament Square in London.

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Please bear in mind the many recent, serious security vulnerabilities which have compromised the Twitter infrastructure and many user accounts, and Twitter's inevitable plans to make money out of you somehow, probably by selling your Communications Traffic Data to commercial and government interests.

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UK Legislation

The United Kingdom suffers from tens of thousands of pages of complicated criminal laws, and thousands of new, often unenforceable criminal offences, which have been created as a "Pretend to be Seen to Be Doing Something" response to tabloid media hype and hysteria, and political social engineering dogmas. These overbroad, catch-all laws, which remove the scope for any judicial appeals process, have been rubber stamped, often without being read, let alone properly understood, by Members of Parliament.

The text of many of these Acts of Parliament are now online, but it is still too difficult for most people, including the police and criminal justice system, to work out the cumulative effect of all the amendments, even for the most serious offences involving national security or terrorism or serious crime.

Foreign Spies / Intelliegence Agencies in the UK

It is not just the UK government which tries to snoop on British companies, organisations and individuals, the rest of the world is constantly trying to do the same, regardless of the mixed efforts of our own UK Intelligence Agencies who are paid to supposedly protect us from them.

Presumably every mainstream media organisation, intelligence agency, serious organised crime or terrorist gang keeps historical copies, so here are some older versions of the London Diplomatic List, for the benefit of web search engine queries, for those people who do not want their visits to appear in the FCO web server logfiles or those whose censored internet feeds block access to UK Government websites.

Campaign Button Links

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."

Cracking the Black Box - "aims to expose technology that is being used in inappropriate ways. We hope to bring together the insights of experts and whistleblowers to shine a light into the dark recesses of systems that are responsible for causing many of the privacy problems faced by millions of people."